Over five years ago, director Chris Columbus‘ production company, 1492 Pictures, secured the remake rights to André Øvredal‘s Troll Hunter, an entertaining and imaginative found footage monster movie. It had been a while since we heard anything about the remake, and Øverdal has now confirmed it’s no longer moving forward.

Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast features three new ballads from composer Alan Menken. Menken, who recently wrote “The Great Beyond” for Sausage Party, collaborated with the late Howard Ashman and lyricist Tim Rice on the original animated film’s tunes. 25 years later, he’s now working on director Bill Condon‘s Beauty and the Beast, which will feature new songs sung by Belle (Emma Watson) and Beast (Dan Stevens), in addition to a song performed by Tony Award winner Audra McDonald.

A key component of being a movie fan in the year 2016 is learning to shrug off remakes of your favorite movies and learn to live with the fact that bonafide classics are always going to get dusted off by studios hoping to capitalize on a familiar title. Remakes are going to happen. History has shown most of ’em to stink. Their presence has never erased the original from existence. The scales balance.

And yet, there’s something undeniably irritating about someone remaking An American Werewolf in London, one of the greatest horror movies of all time and the crown jewel of writer/director John Landis‘ career. It’s a near-perfect movie that just-so-happens to have a famous title. This was inevitable. The big twist here is that Max Landis, John Landis’ son, has jumped on board the remake as a writer and director.

But he’s tested that faith. Repeatedly. This year. Anyone who manages to appear in Alice Through the Looking Glass and The Brothers Grimsby within the space of a few months can do that. And yet, I think it’s impossible to deny that the man is a good actor and when he’s paired with the right collaborators and given the right material, he’s one of the most inventive and surprising talents working today.

One thing he has proven repeatedly in various interviews is that he generally has good taste in other projects, which explains why he’s a fan of the great Danish comedy Klown and why he’s attached to star in an American remake.

Yesterday brought us our first real good look at Bill Condon‘s live-action remake of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. A batch of new photos showed off Gaston, Lefou, Maurice, Cogsworth, Lumiere, Plumette, and Mrs. Potts, in addition to a recreation of one of the animated film’s most famous sequences featuring Belle (Emma Watson) and the Beast (Dan Stevens). How faithful Condon’s film is to the 25-year-old animated musical we’ll have to wait and see, but one welcome change has been made to Belle’s backstory.

The long-promised (or oft-threatened, depending on your point of view) Starship Troopers reboot is finally gearing up to take a big step forward. Columbia Pictures is set to reboot Paul Verhoeven‘s 1997 classic, with Fast and Furious producer Neal H. Moritz and Baywatch reboot writers Mark Swift and Damian Shannon. I’m not going to say this is an bad idea, but I will say that the original film is as close to perfect as movies can get and is, quite literally, my thirteenth favorite movie of all time. Read More »

Seven years ago the team behind TRON: Legacy, director Joseph Kosinski and producer Sean Bailey, started working on a remake of The Black Hole. The screenwriter behindPassengers, Jon Spaihts, was later hired for a rewrite on the sci-fi project. It’s been a while since we’ve heard any news about Disney’s reimagining of Gary Nelson‘s 1979 film, but Spaihts recently informed us of the project’s current status.

For their next live-action remake, Disney is digging way down deep into their vaults, all the way to their very first animated feature. That’s right, a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs movie is now in development. Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train) is in talks to write the script and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land) are attached to write new music. Read More »

Here’s the thing about the television adaptations of The Exorcist and Scream – they both sound like terrible ideas. They booth reek of desperation, of television networks dragging a popular and familiar name kicking and screaming into another medium, hoping that name recognition alone will attract an audience. In the age of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, an age where horror on television has actually become popular, these shows feel like they should be the half-assed attempts to cash in on the small screen’s current obsession with things that go bump in the night.

But this is the point where I choke on my words, eat my hat, etc. Fox’s television riff on The Exorcist and MTV’s reinvention of Scream are not only good, but they’re also two horror-themed shows I’d actually recommend above the other major players in the genre this Halloween. I’m as surprised as anyone when I say that if you can only find time for two spooky shows to binge-watch during the season of the witch, pick these.